My tribute to our great leader (from a 小人物's perspective) in my last blog actually kept me thinking for quite awhile. Even as I penned the last sentence of my previous posting, I was thinking that I could have been rather superfluous with my comments. At the back of my mind I thought it was not a single visionary man that made the difference in this country but really a visionary man backed by a good team. Well, it was his birthday and people can be excessively loving at birthday parties, especially a 90th year one.
I enjoyed Rachel Chang's article in yesterday's ST entitled "Weaning Spore off the Great Man leadership style". She described it well when she cautioned that we should remember "our founding fathers-plural-..." in how they backed their leader with loyalty, without desire to usurp power and striving with a common purpose. She continued to remark that this "Great Leadership Theory" which believes that the "innate intelligence" in civil servants enables them to take on any portfolio, has manifested dangers. She felt that the legacy of this Great Leadership Theory "has narrowed our minds" and stunted the citizen's belief in their own ability to bring about changes. So when things go wrong the government is expected to answer for it and to find solutions.
Now being a real 小人, I can now blame my own narrow mindedness on the Government and the social construct it has created :(
Jokes aside, a bad workman can not blame his tools forever. At my age, I jolly well get cracking to be more aware, ask more questions, try to think broader and deeper, though it is really not that easy to change a shallow thinking habit at this age. This country should really run a university for senior citizens offering courses like political science, social studies and other humanities subjects at low tuition fees.They owe us this last chance to broaden our minds after conditioning us to narrow economic modes of unquestioning utility thinking, don't they?
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